


Episode 13: The Missing

by blueinkpearls, everyperfectsummer



Series: Legends of Tomorrow Season 2 Rewrite [13]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Canon, Argentina, Canon Rewrite, Churros, Dictatorships, Dirty War, Gen, Umbrellas, oh look actual history on a show about time travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-18
Updated: 2017-09-18
Packaged: 2018-12-24 19:42:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12019665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueinkpearls/pseuds/blueinkpearls, https://archiveofourown.org/users/everyperfectsummer/pseuds/everyperfectsummer
Summary: The Legends search for the next spear piece in Argentina, 1978, but find themselves in the middle of a dictatorship and are torn between the desire to change the terrible events around them and the need to preserve the course of history.(episode 13 of a full 22-episode rewrite of season 2 - the same broad story arc, but rewritten episodes)





	1. Chapter 1

_PREVIOUSLY ON LEGENDS OF TOMORROW: Rip shooting Sara in Episode 9, Rip firmly prohibiting the idea of changing the past in Episode 1, the argument about changing history vs. preserving the past in Episode 11, the Legends judging Mick's visions of Len to be a hallucination in Episode 11, and both Gideon confirming that she can detect the "hallucination" of Len, proving him to be real, and the Legion recruiting the past version of Len in Episode 12._

 

**Scene: A helicopter is hovering over the sea.**

**Scene: Waverider bridge. Mick, Oculus!Len, Jax, and Stein are waiting.**

“I don’t get it,” Jax says, and Martin finishes, “What could be taking them so long?”

Mick is staring out the window, while Oculus!Len paces.

 

**Scene: A field, with the Waverider in the distance.**

Sara, Amaya, and Ray are walking quickly towards the ship, along with a small group of six strangers, three of them adults and three are children.

“We’re almost there. I know you’re tired, but we're really close,” Sara says commandingly, careful not to speak too loudly and scare the children.

 

**Scene: 14 hours earlier.**

**Split screen with Legion!Len on the left and Oculus!Len on the right.**

“ _So,_ ” Legion!Len drawls, “I’ve been told that in the future, I die for a crew that call themselves Legends, and they’re working against the group that picked me up, the Legion of Doom.”

He sighs, “It really wouldn’t have been that hard to come up with something better than that. Anyway, both groups are trying to get their hands on a legendary Spear of Destiny, which allows the holder to remake reality.

While I don’t trust the group I’m with all that much, especially Rip, who once led the Legends, I do trust myself -- better than I trust the group that got me killed. How they got Mick to stay on with them after I died, I have no idea, but I’m going to find out. And I’m hoping it won’t take that much convincing to get Mick to resume our partnership again.”

Oculus!Len looks wistfully off screen and then says, “The thing I miss most since I’ve died...well, there are a lot of things, but I guess a big one is actually _being_. Having a body, hands, a voice. Mick and Gideon are the only ones who can hear me, and they’re the most reasonable ones on this team.

And Gideon’s the only one that believes I’m real. I try to help the team when I can, but in their last fight against a rogue timeship, I was barely able to help. Right now, we’re trying to track down either the Legion of Doom - and Cisco could have come up with something better than that - or pieces of the Spear of Destiny, which allows the holder to remake reality. I don’t entirely trust the team to use it well, but I trust Mick a lot more than I trust the Legion. And this team may not be the Rogues I could have led, but they’re not entirely useless--they’re Legends.”

 

**Scene: Waverider library.**

The Legends are sitting around doing various activities: Ray and Stein are reading, Sara and Amaya are sparring, Mick and Jax are working on what appears to be a piece of the time drive, and Len is staring at each group in turn, bitterness and longing warring on his face.

Gideon’s voice breaks in, disturbing the peacefulness of the scene. “Excuse me, but I have detected an aberration in Argentina in the year 1978.”

Sara frowns. “What’s the aberration?”

“The military dictatorship governing Argentina at the time, which was supposed to have ended in 1983, in fact lasted another twenty years. Additionally, scholarly articles have surfaced suggesting that one of those involved in the torturing of political prisoners put down his name as Rip Hunter on official documents. The Legion appears to have co-opted government torture for their own purposes and the government now seems to believe that something worth looking for is located within their country.”

“Rip wouldn’t torture people,” Ray protests.

“Unfortunately, that’s what he appears to be doing,” Gideon says.

“Well, we already know that he’s been brainwashed, to be working with them,” Sara says, “so this is probably an extension of that.”

The mood, which hadn’t been high to begin with, is noticeably lower, and Sara attempts to switch people’s focus from Rip by saying ,“We should find out more about this era. Unless - did anybody study it in school?”

She’s greeted with shrugs all around.

Ray perks up. “I can look up information about this time in history!”

“I can help,” Jax offers, and Ray shakes his head.

“I work better alone,” Ray declines, “helps me concentrate. But thanks for the offer!”

“Ok!” Sara claps her hands. “Ray, library. Everybody else, to the training rooms to practice fighting. Can’t get enough practice!”

 

**Cut to Waverider library. The Legends are watching footage of Mothers marching in the square. Ray is next to a pile of books about the Dirty War. All are US sources.**

“So it’s a very complicated conflict,” Ray says. “The government is doing some bad things, but they’re embroiled in a conflict with terrorists, and in times of war people make mistakes. The Argentinean government was being supported by the US and the terrorists were being supported by the Soviet Union, so the government obviously had to do everything they could to stop the Soviets.”

Len scoffs. “Sounds like someone isn’t very good at research.”

Gideon’s voice emerges from the walls. “Actually, Mr. Palmer, it was not so much a conflict of the government versus terrorists as the government versus both terrorists and itself. The Montoneros’ upper leadership was heavily composed of government spies, especially towards the end. There were so many spies, in fact, that not all of those spies were aware of the identity of their colleagues.

A popular anecdote concerns a meeting of the Montonero leadership in which all but one of the leaders was a government plant - and all participants were unaware of the identities of the others. Witness statements regarding the meeting, and many other facts about the Dirty War in general, have since been recanted, but whether they did so because they were not telling the truth initially, or because they were threatened to keep quiet by the government, is a truth lost to time. In the end, discovering the ‘truth’ of what really happened is extremely complicated.”

Jax says heatedly, “I don’t care if it’s _complicated_! I still don't know if we did the right thing in New Zealand, but the situation wasn't the same. There was actual good to be gained from preserving history. Everything here is just awful. Nothing justifies a government kidnapping, torturing, and killing its own civilians! ”

“Doesn’t the government in your time do all of that as well?” Amaya says. “From what you all have said, the government regularly does so and there are many who are made to pay the price of this behavior.”

A little condescendingly, Ray responds, “Governments everywhere do bad things all the time, but we don’t interfere with it.”

“Spoken like a rich white boy who’s never been on the wrong side of the law. Critically examined the prison and military industrial complexes much?” Len sneers.

Hearing Len, Gideon lapses into silence, waiting for him to finish. After he’s done, Gideon calmly elaborates on US support for the Argentine government during the war.

“...In the end, it was yet another Soviet versus American conflict staged in other countries at the cost of the welfare of the local population.”

Mick tunes out Gideon to stare at Len, concerned about his hostile attitude towards Ray.

Stein says, “Well, maybe we should interfere. We shouldn’t end this dictatorship when it’s meant to end, we should end it immediately.”

Sara responds, “It’s history, Stein. It’s not our job to change what’s going on. We go in, we go out. We focus on the spear piece.”

Stein, getting heated, says, “Wouldn’t you change certain horrors, like the Holocaust, if you could? When we were in the 1940s, I wanted to immediately alter the events that were occurring but Captain Hunter prohibited it. I have stayed quiet since then, especially after my ill judgement while in Antioch, but here our efforts to change history could only be for the better.”

Sara scoffs. “Wait, so now you’re saying Rip’s a bad person for wanting to preserve the timeline and not risk things getting worse.”

“No, I am saying that Captain Hunter was originally working with and taught by the Time Masters. They shaped his ideology, a toxic and destructive one, that if you remember, we helped to destroy!”

No one notices the way Mick’s face tightens, as if pained.

“We all have things we’d like to change about the past. Things we’d like to stop.” Mick looks at the hallucination of Len who’s standing next to him. The rest of the team sees him look at thin air. They can guess what he wants to change.

“When we were in New Zealand learning about the nuclear testing shook my belief about our mission. But in the end preserving history ending up being the right course. We police the time stream, not events,” Amaya says, just a shade more gently than her normal tone. “When I was with the JSA, there were many times when I wanted to interfere in matters that I saw while carrying out my duties, but I always knew that the mission came first. We have to focus on accomplishing our own mission.”

There’s no gentleness in Stein’s voice when he says, “Millions of people dead that we could save. _Millions who died.”_

Len says, quietly, “And the millions that were never born because of it.”

Mick echoes Len. “And the millions that were never born because of it.”

Sara takes a deep breath. “If we change the time stream to avert grand or personal tragedies, it leads to aberrations.”

Stein, switching tactics, says, “Maybe aberrations aren’t the worst thing in the world. Would you have Lily erased from the timeline?”

Ray looks apologetic. “Lily’s really great, but - look at what happened on the Mosaic. That captain messed with something he shouldn't have and it went really, _really_ wrong. Imagine what could happen if we tried to change the timeline. Any aberrations we make could end up having horrific consequences.”

Jax is resolute. “Well maybe changes wouldn't be the worst thing. What’s going on here, in Argentina, is like it was when we were in China. How people are being treated is the real aberration.”

Sara, equally as resolute as Jax, responds, “It’s not right. I agree. But it happened and it’s what we know. What if we change it and something worse happens? I saved Laurel and I ended up giving Thawne the spear pieces! What if we save some people, and sentence countless more to death?”

She stops and straightens herself. “We have to go on. We can’t let the Legion get the spear piece and we have to get history back on course.” She rocks back on her feet. “Jax, Stein, and Mick, you’ll drop us off near Trelew Air Base and go on to the Buenos Aires city center. Ray, Amaya, you’re with me. We’ll search the base top to bottom if we have to. Either way, one of our two groups is bound to find the spear piece.”

Len rolls his eyes. “This is a stupid idea.”

As if in response, Ray chirps, “This is a really good plan, Sara!”

“For a nerd, Ray really failed to pick up the essential lesson of D&D,” Len says, scorn dripping from his every word. “Never split the party, even if your leader thinks you should. There’s strength in numbers against the Legion.”

Mick raises an eyebrow at that, but swallows back any commentary he might have made.

“Okay!” Sara says, sounding for all the world as though she were coaching basketball. “Gideon, set course to Argentina, 1978.”

 

**Scene: Legion of Doom at Buenos Aires Navy School of Mechanics (ESMA).**

“The ship’s new radar detected the Legends’ ship landing a few minutes ago,” Darhk says. “Playtime’s over. We find it now or we risk losing another spear piece.”

“What I’m curious about,” Legion!Len asks, “is how we were found.”

The others exchange glances, and after a brief hesitation, Eobard smoothly says, “Simply arriving in history changes its course; those ripples can be followed, however small. What we need now is a plan to evade them.”

Len raises an eyebrow, but accepts that answer.

Darhk steps forward. “My plan is -”

Queen Bee cuts him off. “We’re not following _your_ plan again.”

“Why not, exactly?” he bites off the words.

Queen Bee laughs. “Well, your plans haven’t been very successful of late, have they Darhk? In fact, it’s been your plans that have led the Legends to take possession of the last two spear pieces. Well, I say it’s time you stepped aside.”

Darhk stiffens and glares at her.

“Time for some newer blood, maybe,” she continues. “Or...colder blood. We did recruit him for a reason.”

“He’s new! He barely knows the basics about the existence of time travel, let alone everything that’s needed for our kind of work.”

“Well, you are supposed to be well-versed in these basics, but your efforts keep failing. No wonder you were killed in the present timeline, if this is your normal success rate.”

“You’re the one who couldn’t consolidate her kingdom on her own. So maybe you shouldn’t be throwing stones about failure.”

Eobard makes an irritated sound, before breaking in. “In this case, I side with Queen Bee.”

“You have to be joking,” Darhk snaps.

“We have had an...unfortunate success streak as of late and while _I_ ,” Eobard says, with a glance at Queen Bee, “don’t hold that against you, perhaps a change of pace might not be the worst thing. Besides, planning on how to acquire something of great value is what he’s known for.”

Len who’s been standing to the side of all this, leaning against a wall and watching the two fight with an eyebrow quirked, smiles.

“So what’s the plan, Cold?”

“Thought you’d never ask. Well, let’s say we’re going to send them on a wild goose chase. Or possibly several. I’m going to get what I need from the ship.”

He leaves and for a moment the room is silent.

Then Eobard says, “Remember, people. We keep him out of the basement, at least until we know we can trust him.”

Darhk laughs. “Yeah, don’t want him finding all those people we’ve been torturing.”

“Please, they were torturing people long before we got here. We just...directed them towards a more useful goal.”

 

**Scene: Waverider Cargo Bay.**

After Ray, Amaya, and Sara have been dropped off, Jax and Stein head back upstairs to steer the ship to Buenos Aires. Mick, however, hangs back to talk to Len. "What's your beef with Haircut?” Mick asks.

Len, more than a little bitter, responds, “If he weren’t so eager to play heroic martyr I wouldn’t be stuck half alive!”

Mick, turning away, says, "You’re not half alive. You’re dead. I know you're dead. You're dead and you're not coming back. This is a hallucination."

“I’m real, and I’m here, Mick!”

Mick walks away, repeating, “Not real, not real,” under his breath.

Len shouts, “Mick! Listen to me!” after Mick, before sitting down on a crate in the bay. He continues to sit, not stirring even as the Waverider lands once more, and the remaining Legends disembark.

 

**Cut to Navy School.**

Darhk, Eobard, and Legion!Len are gathered around a map of Argentina.

Len says, “We’ve got them split up. Queen Bee will be waiting for one group and Rip for the other.

“I have to say, I might have underestimated you,” Darhk says.

Len says, “Divide and conquer usually works well. Now that they’ve followed two false trails, they don’t have the resources to look for the actual spear piece.”

“Seems like overkill,” Darhk comments.

Slightly snidely, Eobard says, “I think the point is to make it easier to kill.”

“Not the reason for it, but sure, if you have the shot,” Len says.

Darhk rolls his eyes. “With this crew, I’m sure you’ll get the shot.”

“Try to avoid my partner, though,” Len says. “I won’t feel particularly… friendly if anything happens to him.”

 

**Cut to Waverider Bridge.**

Gideon asks, “Should I reveal your presence to the rest of the team, Mr. Snart?”

Oculus!Len, slightly bitter, says, “Why would they care? I’m ‘dead and not coming back,’ after all.” He takes a deep breath and then exhales. “How’s Lisa?”

Gideon says, “Lisa Snart has of late been very successful in her chosen profession, committing a number of high profile thefts while avoiding both the police, the Flash, and Kid Flash. She has also been in touch with a large number of other metahumans engaging in criminal activity, such as Shawna Baez, Mark Mardon, Roy Bivolo, and Hartley Rathaway, who is open to working with both the Flash and you and your sister, depending on the situation.”

“She’s been busy. And I have a feeling I know what she’s planning.”

Gideon responds, “The formation of the Rogues appears to be in progress.”

Len smirks. “Good.”

Gideon asks, politely, “Anything else?”

“What’s the Flash been up to in my city? He taking care of it?”

Gideon tells him, “The Flash and his team are currently in the midst of preventing an invasion of Earth-1’s Central City by metahuman gorillas from Earth-2. As the relevant events that would predict whether or not the invasion takes place are occurring on another earth and outside of this timeline, it is currently difficult to predict whether the Flash’s efforts to prevent the invasion will succeed.”

“Gorillas,” Len says, flatly.

Gideon responds, “As I have just said, Mr. Snart.”

“Gorillas. Metahuman gorillas. Why?” Len asks, rhetorically.

Gideon tells him, “The leader of this invasion appears to be a metahuman gorilla called Grodd. He originates from this earth, but was sent to Earth-2 in order to neutralize the threat he posed.”

“Well, that worked out well,” Len says. “Anything else the Flash has screwed up lately?”

“While the outcome of the gorilla invasion is as yet uncertain,” Gideon says, “his imminent engagement to Iris West is a stable event in the timeline.”

Len raises an eyebrow. “Mazel Tov, Flash. Didn’t answer my question.”

Gideon pauses, and then gives the AI equivalent of a sigh. “My creator is dealing with yet another evil speedster.”

Len rolls his eyes. “Why am I not surprised.”

“Any more questions, Mr. Snart?”

“Why did I have so much trouble with the other time ship?” Len asks.

“The temporal warping surrounding the Mosaic prevented you from boarding. Your molecules are still unstable--”

Len cuts her off. “Spare me the timey wimey stuff, Gideon. But thanks for the save.”

“My pleasure, Mr. Snart.”

 

**Scene: Sara, Amaya, and Ray at Trelew Air Base.**

They’d been in Trelew for all of five minutes when they realized the base was very much occupied.

They’d decided to divide and conquer, each of them eavesdropping on a separate room before searching it, so that they could be as quick as possible. They’ve checked out four rooms so far, all on the same hallway, finding them empty. The fifth is not.

As Ray sneaks into an office ahead of the others he overhears something that sends chills up his spine.

Ray sneaks back out, and signals Sara and Amaya that there are people in the room. They sneak further down the hallway before ducking into a stairwell.

“Sara, Amaya, I just heard them talk about the next batch of people that they’re going after - names and addresses and everything. And that’s – well. One of them’s pregnant, and they’re going to take her baby. Give it to one of the men in that room, because he wants a kid and apparently is high ranking enough to warrant being given one. We can’t let that happen, you guys, we _can’t_.”

Sara and Amaya exchange glances, and Sara nods. “We’ll go after them.” With that, the group abandons their search of the base, the three of them sneaking out just after they’d snuck in.

 

**Scene: The Warehouse District of Port of Comodoro Rivadavia. Eobard, Darhk, and Legion!Len are searching for the spear piece.**

“I like the atmosphere here,” Eobard muses. “The overwhelming sense of terror, suspicion, and a cowed populace is really...”

“Inspiring?” Darhk asks.

“Inspiring,” Eobard smiles slowly, looking around at the city. “That’s the word I was looking for.”

 

**Scene: Oculus!Len strides purposefully through the streets of Buenos Aires and straight through buildings, heading towards Mick and Firestorm. His passage attracts no attention.**

 

**Cut to Legends having just snuck out of Trelew Air Base.**

A figure peels off the wall and stalks after them, taking care to conceal themselves in shadows.

 

**Cut to Buenos Aires City Center.**

Firestorm and Mick, joined by Oculus!Len, walk a little ways, and then, after a few blocks, passes by a bakery. Mick scans the items in the window with a critical eye and then walks in, followed by the others.

“Mr. Rory, we need to keep on task!”

“Come on, Grey, stopping for a sec won’t hurt and it smells amazing.”

“Good morning,” the woman behind the counter says. “How can I help you?”

“One moment,” Mick tells her, and then turns to the others. “Anybody have a preference?”

“Anything,” Jax and Stein say in fervent unison, while Len says, “Churros please.”

Mick turns back to the woman and says, “Six of each one,” pointing to the alfajores, churros, and the croissant rectangles glazed with sugar the woman had called vigilantes.

“Vigilantes, Mick? You always were fond of them. Should’ve taken it as a sign,” Len muses.

The baker nods and moves to fill the cardboard box with the baked goods, humming slightly as she does so.

She hands them a cardboard box, tied with string, they pay, and exit the bakery. They start to eat as they walk, and Jax waves a churro around with enthusiasm after taking a single bite.

“This is really good!”

“I wouldn’t know,” Len mutters bitterly, “given that I _no longer have taste buds._ ”

Mick looks pained at that, but Jax distracts him with rhapsodizing about the baked goods. Midway through a speech that’s on the verge of becoming a soliloquy, they suddenly hear from several open windows, “GOAL!” “GOAL!” “GOAL!”

People start honking the horns of their cars, Mick, Jax, Stein, and Len watch with wide eyes as the street seems to transform with cheers and and joyful screaming.

“What’s going on?!” Jax asks.

“Going by the country, I’m guessing soccer and Argentina just scored a goal,” Mick explains.

“Also the fact that they’re shouting ‘goal’,” Len snarks. “That’s a minor hint.”

Stein rolls his eyes. “Typical, getting excited about sports when there’s essentially a civil war occurring.”

“Hey,” Jax defends, “sports can be important for morale, and this place needs a morale boost right now.”

“Besides,” Len says, “Gideon made it clear that the military used the media to distract much of the population from their daily activities. Sports can be very entertaining and very distracting.”

Mick snorts. “So it’s the government as usual.”

 

**Cut to government warehouse in Port of Comodoro Rivadavia.**

“What is this place?” Darhk asks.

Legion!Len snarks, “Seems like a warehouse to me.”

“This is where the government stores contraband goods,” Eobard says.

“Wouldn’t there be guards? At a government warehouse?” Darhk says.

“There’s one, but trust me, he won’t be waking up anytime soon,” Eobard reassures them. Quietly, to himself and Darhk, he adds, “Or ever.”

As the Legion walk inside the warehouse, they’re confronted with masses and masses of crates. “So what does the spear piece look like? Is it pen size? Telephone pole sized?” Len asks.

“It’s should be about this big,” Eobard says, holding his hands apart. “And stick shaped. Easy enough to find.”

They open the first crate, and inside are dozens of umbrellas. Darhk opens a second one, and it, too, is full of umbrellas.

Darhk snarks, “You said easy enough?”

Len smirks, and goes to open a third crate, revealing that it also contains dozens of umbrellas.

Eobard pauses, vanishes, and then returns carrying one of their earlier spear fragments. “It will be easy. We can use this to find it.”

 

**Cut to City Center.**

Progressing through fields of joy and celebration, Jax, Stein, Len and Mick find Rip exactly where he’s supposed to be: standing inside of an empty office building, in plain view of the outside windows.

“This is too easy,” Mick and Len say in unison.

Stein shrugs. “Perhaps the brainwashing has led him to make foolish mistakes.”

“Yeah,” Len says, rolling his eyes, but tension in every line of his body, “like the one we’re making now by walking into a trap.”

They enter the building through a window that Rip is facing away from. Rip hears them approach, turns, and smiles. “I’ve been expecting you.”

Jax scoffs. “The real Rip was above cliche lines like that. He could think for himself and not blindly follow whatever programming they put in you. That’s what made him a true member of our team.”

Instead of replying, Rip pulls a gun from out of his coat, and starts shooting. The Legends do their best to evade the bullets, Jax and Stein falling away from each other before they can merge, and Len frantically tries to interfere by wresting the gun away from Rip. Unsurprisingly, his hands pass straight through.

As Mick drops to the ground to avoid the hail of bullets Rip aims at him, the bakery box falls from his hands and crashes to the floor, the last two churros and an alfajor spilling out onto the ground.

Jax freezes for just a moment and looks at the fallen deliciousness, slain in battle and now uneatable. “I don’t care if he’s our friend,” he says flatly. “I’m gonna kick his ass.”

“You can always just...get more?” Len points out, and Mick stifles a laugh, before pulling out his gun and aiming it at Rip. As the flames start to burst in Rip’s general direction, Rip pulls out a button and presses it. Suddenly, glass walls shoot up and down from the floor and ceiling of the room and trap the Legends inside.

Mick continues spraying the glass, but it stubbornly refuses to melt. Mick turns off the gun, strides forward, and slams the glass that they are trapped behind, frowning at the resistance that meets him. “Fireproof and probably bulletproof. How do we get out?”

Rip’s laughter can be heard from outside the walls, and he mockingly knocks on the glass in front of Mick’s face. “Having trouble there? We found something special just for you. And Firestorm, don’t even bother trying to melt it, we made sure it could resist the temperature of your flames as well. Now, I’m off to find the Waverider. It’ll be difficult for you to catch up to us if you can’t leave 1978, now won’t it?”

Rip begins to walk away.

Jax and Stein merge into Firestorm. “We have an idea. We don’t have to _melt_ it--”

Firestorm puts their hands on the glass, and begins to transmute it. In seconds, it collapses into steam.

The Legends escape the trap. Rip turns to run out of the office building. Firestorm sets fire to the exits, and Rip turns mid run from the office, exits to the stairs, and up to the next floor. Mick runs after Rip, and Len stays behind, watching the exits.

**Rip exits, pursued by Mick.**

 

**Cut back to Legion at the warehouse.**

Dark, Eobard, and Legion!Len are sitting on the floor by dozens of open crates of umbrellas, with hundreds of umbrellas scattered on the floor around them.

Eobard has the spear piece in one hand and is hovering it above the umbrella he’s holding in the other. When the umbrella shows no change, he throws it on the floor where it lands in a pile of similarly discarded umbrellas.

“I thought you said our spear piece was supposed to make this one easy to find,” Darhk snarls.

 

**Cut to the office building. Mick gently lowers an unconscious Rip to the floor.**

Firestorm strides over and sits on top of an unconscious Rip. “We’ll babysit him, you go get us an escape vehicle that’s big enough to carry us and a body. Not that he’s dead! An unconscious body, not a dead body. You know what I mean.”

 

**Cut to Sara, Ray, and Amaya in Trelew, being followed by a figure on the rooftops.**

Sara wraps an arm around Ray and Amaya, pulling the two of them in close, and whispers, “Don’t turn around, but there’s someone following us up on the rooftops.” Amaya stiffens, and reaches down to activate her amulet, giving herself the hearing of a bat. After a beat of listening, she nods.

“It’s Queen Bee,” she whispers. “Or someone else in 1978 Argentina managed to find wings that sound exactly like hers.”

Sara thinks for a second, and then whispers, “Okay, here’s the plan. We’re going to need at least two people on the civilians, to get them to safety. Amaya, do you think you can take on Queen Bee alone? Because I’m not willing to risk you if you don’t think you’ll be all right. Remember, you don’t need to beat her, just hold her off until Ray and I get back from taking the civilians to safety.”

Amaya smiles, soft and dangerous at the same time. “I can take her.”

“Okay,” Sara says, “we don’t want to lead her to the civilians, so we’re going to turn to cross the street and then split up. That should buy us a split second of time while she’s crossing the street to see where we’ve gone. And in the moment when she’s trying to decide where to go to follow us, ambush her.”

 

**Cut to Queen Bee arriving on the other side of the street.**

Queen Bee has just landed on the opposite rooftop when a hand grasps her ankle. Queen Bee teeters off balance, wings flapping as she scrambles for purchase. She twists, and uses her other leg to kick Amaya in the face.

Amaya has now let go of the rooftop that she’d been clinging to, and is held in the air only by the hand on Queen Bee’s ankle.

Amaya then swings her legs up and around to land on the rooftop next to Queen Bee. She scrambles backwards and up into a standing position, before activating her amulet to give her the speed of a cheetah and launching herself at Queen Bee.

 

**Cut to Mick returning and nudging Firestorm off Rip.**

Mick picks Rip up, slings him over his shoulder, and carries him outside.

Firestorm deunifies.

“You can’t carry him outside! What if someone sees!” Stein says frantically.

Mick turns and grins. “That’s why I stole a government car.”

They leave the building openly carrying a body into a busy street. As they load him into the green car, a Ford Falcon, people cross to the other side of the street to avoid the group, while other civilians simply watch; no one interferes in the kidnapping. The noise in the street is muffled, not silent, with shouting and honks audible from other streets, but people are quiet and the residual joy from earlier has died.

The Legends begin to drive away.

 

**Cut to inside the car.**

Jax watches the Argentinians return to their daily business as though nothing out of the ordinary had taken place, and shakes his head. “That was so incredibly creepy. Can we please get out of this dystopian nightmare as fast as possible?”

“If we succeed in reforming the spear, this nightmare would end for everyone, not just us,” Stein says, wistfully.

“They’d never let us,” Jax says, resigned.

“We could find a way to use it without them finding out,” Mick says. “Better to ask forgiveness than permission. And I’m pretty sure everyone here living with a boot on their necks would say the same.”

 

**Cut to Ray and Sara walking quickly through the streets of a small town.**

Sara knocks sharply on the door. When an old woman comes and unlocks it, Sara says, “They’re coming for you. Sometime tonight or early tomorrow. You have to come with us, we’ll help you get somewhere safe.”

The old woman is pale and her eyes are wide and desperate, but she has planted herself in front of the door, blocking Sara and Ray from getting in. “How can we possibly know you aren’t with them?”

“You can’t,” Sara says. “But either we’re telling the truth and we’re taking you to safety or we are with them and you’re being taken anyway.”

Ray steps forward. “Ma’am, I think you know that if we were here to hurt you we would have already broken down the door. And we haven’t. Please let us in. We want to help you.”

There’s a pause. The old woman nods, steps back, and lets them in.

 

**Cut to Amaya and Queen Bee fighting.**

They’re circling each other, bruised, with cuts bleeding. They measure each other up now, conserving energy so as to deal better, stronger blows.

“So set on keeping the world as it is, when it’s never been and never will be kind to you or yours,” Queen Bee taunts, before kicking out at Amaya.

“I don’t care what you have to say,” Amaya retorts, retaliating with a kick of her own. “My job is to stop you before you can destroy this world.”

“I’ve met your granddaughter you know,” Queen Bee says, “Not nearly as good a fighter as you. Maybe she would be a better fighter with her grandmother there to teach her. Or her mother. But then, the possibility of that went the way of your little village, didn’t it?”

“You’re lying.” She feints, and then hits Queen Bee in the side. “You would do anything to get me to turn on my team.”

“Why do I have to lie?” Queen Bee says, sounding all-too reasonable, and mysteriously not out of breath, for someone in the middle of a fight. “Ask the history books about how your village was destroyed, your AI should have access to them. Ask about your granddaughter growing up all alone…”

Amaya knocks Queen Bee out. “You’re _wrong._ ” There is doubt in her voice. She turns to run towards the others, glancing backwards several times at Queen Bee’s unconscious body.

 

**Cut to the Waverider bridge.**

“Gideon, do you know how to fix Rip?” Jax asks.

“I’m afraid not, Mr. Jackson,” Gideon says, sounding upset.

Mick interrupts. “I know how to fix him. Because of the whole...Time Master thing.” He picks Rip off the chair where he’d been lying down and carries him to the med bay. Len pushes off the wall he’d been leaning against and follows. Instead of going with him all the way into the medbay, he stands just outside the doorway, facing outward, and proceeds to resume leaning.

 

**Cut to Legion of Doom at the warehouse, surrounded by an ocean of umbrellas, looking both tired and bored.**

Eobard pulls a seemingly normal umbrella out of the immense pile of umbrellas on the floor and holds it aloft, grinning. “Search is over,” he calls out to the others. “I have it.”

Darhk and Len drop the umbrellas they’d been inspecting and follow Eobard out of the warehouse. There’s a flash of lightning, and Eobard and Len disappear, Eobard taking Len back to the ship. A moment later, Eobard returns, this time to carry Darhk.

 

**Twenty minutes after Mick took Rip to the medbay.**

Gideon makes a sound as though she’s clearing her throat.

“Yes, Gideon?” Stein says.

“The aberration in which Argentina’s military dictatorship did not end in 1983 has been corrected. It can be assumed that the spear piece has been found.”

“Which means that the others got it!” Jax says, reaching out for a high five with Stein.

“Or that the Legion did,” Stein points out, not accepting the high five. “We won’t know until the others come back.”

They pass the time in tense silence until the door Len was leaning on opens inward, leaving the man to flail awkwardly in the air and fall through Mick as he leaves the medbay, followed by Rip. “It’s done,” Mick says, gesturing at an un-brainwashed Rip, whose face is drained of color and whose pupils are blown, making him squint occasionally in the light, wincing.

 

**Cut to a field.**

Sara and Ray are walking as quickly as they can, even as Sara carries a 7-year-old and Ray a 4-year-old. A 13-year-old, a pregnant woman, a young man, and the old woman from before follow behind them.

“It’s just a little bit farther,” Sara says. “We just need to get you onto our...plane, and then we can take you to Mexico.”

“What kind of plane do you have?” the thirteen year old asks.

Ray and Sara exchange glances. “A fast one.”

 

**Cut to Queen Bee stirring on the ground where she fell.**

She puts a hand on her temple, mutters about blows to the head being bad for her health, and activates her comm, letting the other Legion members know where she is. Within seconds she, too, is collected – here one second, gone the next, in a flash of lightning and blur of movement.

 

**Cut to opening scene, with Ray, Sara, and Amaya (having rejoined the others) walking towards the Waverider, a family in tow. The door opens and the exhausted group climbs aboard.**

 

**Cut to Waverider bridge as the two groups debrief.**

“You brought civilians, back to the Waverider?” Jax and Stein ask in synch, Jax confused and Stein shocked.

“It’s not like it’s the first time. And they needed to be safe!” Sara says defensively, gesturing at the family.

Jax smiles at the family. “Why don’t you guys stay here while my team and I argue in the other room?”

They’re all faintly disconcerted, but agree.

 

**Cut to Waverider bridge.**

“You’re all hypocrites!” Jax spits out at the other three. “The timeline is sacred until a chance to change it for the better falls in your lap, and suddenly you remember that we’re supposed to be heroes?” He crosses his arms and addresses the ceiling. “Gideon, how much did these guys change the timeline?”

“Surprisingly little,” Gideon says. “Once deposited in Mexico, none of them will make any significant change to the timeline.”

“You couldn’t have known that, bringing them back,” Rip snarls. “I’m disappointed in all of you. That you would think to create the very sort of aberration we exist to prevent.”

“Umm, didn’t we start this mission to create an aberration in the first place?” Jax argues. “Because saving your family and stopping Savage was kind of a big change from the timeline, wasn’t it?”

Rip turns red, and begins stammering, “That’s completely different. The Time Masters-”

“The Time Masters are gone. _You've_ been gone. We've had to work without you - work against you, even - and we've done an okay job,” Jax says.

Amaya steps in, changing tactics. “Have you _seen_ what’s going on out there? Do you realize what these people are living through?” Amaya says to Rip. “I’m with Stein and Jax. Maybe aberrations aren’t the worst thing in the world.”

"As Legends, our whole purpose is to fight against aberrations. And I know we went against that mission statement by rescuing civilians, but Gideon has confirmed that there are no discernible effects to the timeline," says Sara. "Anyway, Amaya, didn't you say we needed to preserve history as it is?"

“Because I had never truly realized of how much suffering we have the power to prevent! With the JSA, yes, we could help and there were many situations where we could have done more, but there was nothing on this scale!”

“But what if we end up making everything worse by trying to help? We can’t predict what domino effects our changes could make, and every aberration we’ve caused has ended up making things worse!” Ray says.

“I’m just a criminal–” Mick starts.

“ _Supervillain_ ,” Len interjects, and Mick falters for a second before continuing.

“– but I thought you’re all supposed to be heroes. Aberrations could mean saving people. Thought you hero types were all about that.”

“And as I recall,” Stein says, his face red and anger dripping from his voice, “Lily was a great assistance against the Dominators. She was an incredible help and we would have struggled without her presence!”

“Like you’re all struggling without _my_ presence,” Len says.

At those words, Mick gets up and leaves the room.

“Mick! Where are you going?”

“What’s wrong Mick?”

“Mr. Rory, we are all still discussing this!”

Sara silences them all with a shake of her head and a raised hand, and turns to follow Mick. Rip raises an eyebrow, surprised at how easily she commands the team.

When they’re out of earshot of the others, Sara says, “As both your friend and your captain, this is me checking in with you. After everything that happened – especially with your experiences with the Time Masters.”

Mick keeps walking away. “I’m fine, Blondie.”

Sara raises her eyebrow and says, her voice skeptical, “Really?”

Mick stops, but doesn’t look at her as he says, “...Ok, I’m not great, but-- I’ll be better off alone and figuring things out on my own.”

Sara nods, accepting his answer, and briskly makes to leave.

Before she goes out the door, she turns around and says, “I’m your captain, though, and it’s my job to look after you all, so if the whole ‘going it alone’ thing doesn’t work out, I’m, uh, here to help, I guess.”

Sara nods again, awkwardly, and leaves even more quickly than before.

A few minutes after she leaves, Amaya enters and sits beside him. She's silent for a few seconds, and then asks him, “Are you alright? From what I’ve gathered about your experiences, seeing someone else be brainwashed can’t be easy.”

Mick shrugs. “I’m just fine. How are you, Bee’s been gunning for you since she first showed up here. Heard she got in a few good hits.”

“I’m fine,” Amaya says. She’s silent for a moment and then adds, “Well, not exactly. She said some things...about the future, that...well. She said that bad things happen to my family, to my village, and I don’t want to find out if what she said is true, because no one should know their own future, but at the same time, I want to know. I want to save them if I can. Am I making sense?”

Mick doesn’t immediately speak, but eventually says, “I only learned how to get rid of the brainwashing because I was with the Time Masters for so long, they did it to me for so long, that I learned how to do it and undo it just from watching them.”

“That sounds terrible.”

“It was,” Mick says. “I try not to think about it. I go around doing my best to forget…”

“Of course, the torture that they put you through would drive anyone to –” Amaya says.

“I try not to think about it at all,” Mick says, “because if I think about them I remember that they can’t ever do that to me again. And they can’t do it because of Snart. What he did, killing them all. The Time Masters can never get to me again and Snart’s dead every day because of it.”

Amaya reaches out and squeezes his hand.

**The scene pulls out to show Oculus!Len in the background, watching the two from afar, his expression sad.**

Seeing how upset Mick is, he is no longer as angry at Mick for rejecting him earlier. Without Mick seeing, Len moves to come closer, to say something, but accidentally goes through a chair before he can approach Mick and Amaya.

Len stares at his hands, his body, all intangible and only occasionally visible. He retreats and leaves Mick to grieve.

 

**Cut to Waverider bridge, where Rip is addressing most of the Legends.**

“I’m happy to be back and a part of this team again, and I must apologize for everything I’ve done while with the Legion.”

The others respond in a chorus of “Not your fault,” “We don’t blame you,” and “You were brainwashed.”

“So I still have a place with this team?” Rip asks.

“Well, we even kept your old room intact for you,” Sara says.

Rip shakes his head. “I’ll keep my quarters, but it’s clear that I’m no longer the captain of this team. That is now you, Sara.”

Sara is flustered, but says, “Well, then as team leader I welcome you back and invite the whole team to celebrate your return.”

“Actually,” Rip says, “it’s been a long and exhausting day, so I’m going to retire to my carefully preserved quarters.”

“Are you sure you want to be alone right now?” Sara asks. “You’ve just been through something pretty awful. Maybe some company might help?” She looks at the others. “The team’s all getting together in the library to watch a movie, decompress.”

“Yes. I’m sure,” Rip says. “I’ll be out soon enough.”

 

**Cut to all the Legends in the library.**

“So how did the dictatorship end, anyway?” Ray asks. “Last I heard in 2017, Argentina had a democracy.”

“In an ironic turn of events,” Gideon says, “British imperialism proved helpful. When Argentina attacked the islands known as both the Malvinas and the Falklands, they anticipated an easy victory that would bolster their public support. Instead, nearly 10,000 of their troops were captured, and they were forced to surrender. Shortly after the war ended, they dropped the ban on political parties.

A year later, Alfonsin was elected president, and democracy mostly resumed. Under fear that the military would revolt again, Alfonsin passed two laws to appease them, colloquially known as the “full stop” and “obedience” laws. The former signaled an end to prosecution for acts committed during the Dirty War while the latter granted immunity to every member of the armed forces under the rank of colonel, under the theory that they were only following orders.”

At those words, all of the Legends in the room wince.

“Both laws were repealed in 2003, found unconstitutional in 2005, and prosecutions have since resumed. An Argentinean court would go on to term the extermination of political dissidents during this period as a genocide. The estimates of the disappeared range from the low thousands to nearly a hundred thousand, with the most common estimates being somewhere in the middle.

“The exact fate of many of those who went missing may never be known, as the bodies were alternately burned in mass pyres or dropped from helicopters over the ocean. The fate of the disappeared gained fame with the march of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, who march to protest the kidnappings of their relatives, chiefly their children.

“Many of the Mothers themselves were disappeared for the crime of protesting the disappearances, but the Mothers persist until well past 2017, not only for information and justice, but because they have estimated that up to 500 of their grandchildren, those who were taken from pregnant women who were later murdered, were stolen. To paraphrase one historian, ‘the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo will march until they find out what happened to their children. And so they will be marching forever.’”

“Well that’s...depressing,” Jax says.

“It’s a problem, but it’s a problem that won’t matter if the Legion gets all of the spear pieces,” Sara says. “We need to focus on collecting the spear pieces, not addressing human rights abuses, however terrible they may be.”

Indecision wars on the faces of everyone in the room, but they accept her words.

“Gideon, let’s get out of here,” she says. “We have some people to drop off in Mexico.”

 

**Cut to outside the Waverider, which takes off.**

In Argentina, the Mothers continue to march. Somewhere off the coast, a helicopter is dropping bodies into the sea.

 


	2. Chapter 2

[see on tumblr here](http://kickingshoes.tumblr.com/post/165472123627/art-for-the-thirteenth-lotrewrite-written-by)

Kickingshoes' tarot card for Episode 13 - they've created a full set of Major Arcana based on the episodes! See more of their art [here](http://kickingshoes.tumblr.com/tagged/our-art)!


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